the 90th minute

Until September 2007, when my oldest daughter was born, this blog covered daily life and politics in Israel, as well as Hebrew-English linguistic issues, from the perspective of an American-raised journalist and translator living in Israel. Now it mostly serves as the SmunchMonk&Bear news agency, a portal into the bizarre universe of the little people. Read more at: www.shoshanakordova.com.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

What the bear cub has been up to

Moriya's extensive training regimen seems to be bearing results all at once. She had been doing push-ups for several months, first just her arms, then on all fours. Then she started half-scooting half-crawling a little before Purim: She would get on all fours, move herself forward, then plop back down onto her belly. But in the last few weeks she has been zooming all around the house, trying to sneak into the bedrooms (we have to remember again to keep the doors closed - especially the bathroom!), and has added sitting to her repertoire.

And almost as soon as she began crawling really well and sitting, she started pulling herself up. She now regularly pulls herself up to her knees and, increasingly, her feet. The "safe zone" is getting higher and higher! This has all been a boon for the (relative) cleanliness of the living room. I sweep the floor what feels like sixty times a day, and I have discovered the most effective threat yet for the older kids (and the easiest one for me to make, since I don't have to enforce it): If you leave anything on the floor, Moriya will eat it. And even when that's not a sufficient deterrent, it sure works wonders when she and her five teeth start gnawing on Rimonit's or Kinneret's latest art project!

Moriya, who is 8 months old, has been astounding babysitters from one week to the next. And even though I've been through this twice before and even though this feels kind of cheesy to admit, it's still awesome, in the original sense of the word, to be able to witness human development so close up. It's like super-high-speed evolution, from being basically immobile to being quadripedal to being bipedal in about a year - and that's on the physical level alone!

Moriya has also been progressing on the communication front. She is babbling a lot (in addition to growling, of course). Her favorite syllable is "ba." And she has been waving, though I'm not really sure to what degree she may or may not mean anything by it, since she does it at random times. Because she is now physically (and I think cognitively) more ready for signing, I've begun with baby sign language - mostly "eat," "nurse" (I made one up for that, since miming someone milking a cow - the sign for milk, which some recommend using for nursing as well - is just so not on), "all done" and (when I remember) "diaper." There is a possibility she may already be doing "all done," since she has done it more than once when she didn't want to eat anymore, but I can't be sure because it looks pretty much the same as her wave, and it might be coincidence. But then, I tend to impose a high burden of proof.

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